


The Multitudinous Seas Incarnadine

by nwhepcat



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Angst, Community: remix_redux, M/M, S4 BtVS
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-07
Updated: 2010-03-07
Packaged: 2017-10-07 19:01:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/68194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nwhepcat/pseuds/nwhepcat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the fall of the Initiative, Giles reacts to news about an old enemy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Multitudinous Seas Incarnadine

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Musesfool's Remix Challenge, a remix of Raven's [Sing for Absolution](http://www.sleepingwithghosts.popullus.net/buffyfic/singforabsolution.html).  
> (Remixed with a very liberal hand.) Thanks to my wonderful betas Automatic Badgirl, Mobile ALH and Herself for helping make this a better story.

Giles descended the stairs from his bedroom, pausing briefly to check his image in the mirror at the landing. A recent habit -- no, nervous tic. He reached out, brushing his hand over the rough repair work on the wall next to the glass. So little time these past weeks to do things properly.

His head ached, worse than the hangovers he's endured of late. First the dream, then the conversation in the kitchen until well past dawn. He'd come home and slept for hours, and now golden late afternoon sunlight slanted through his windows.

Occasionally he gave thought to finding another apartment, one on the ground floor or higher, one that might let in more light. After the events at the Initiative, however, the thought of gathering his belongings and moving house appealed not at all.

Giles shambled into the kitchen to put the kettle on. He assembled his cup and tea and milk, then put bread in the toaster. How strange it seemed to putter in his kitchen, such mundane acts after the surreal actions of the dreams, the four of them being stalked by the First Slayer.

He was sorry he couldn't reach her somehow, assure her they'd meant no harm or disrespect. What a lonely life she must have led. No friends, not even a watcher. He suspected it was terribly short as well.

The kettle shrieked and he poured the tea into the pot, draped a kitchen towel over it. Before he could settle cup and pot on the tray, the doorbell rang. He'd actually expected the children to sleep even later than he had -- sleeping in was, after all, the superpower of most youths.

To his surprise, it was Riley he found at his door. He was still pale, favoring his injury, having reached across his body to press the doorbell.

"Riley." Giles couldn't keep the surprised note from his voice. "How are you feeling this morn-- this afternoon?"

"A touch better. Pretty sore."

"I should imagine."

"I'd like to speak with you, sir." _Sir._ This in itself played up the difference between Buffy and her longtime friends and her serious young man.

Giles swung the door wide open and stepped back in wordless welcome. "I just made tea, and there's enough for two."

Riley nodded and stepped inside. "I'd like that."

Considering the hour, Giles added a packet of biscuits to the tray. When he returned to the living room, Riley was still standing, his large frame looming in the low-ceilinged room.

"Please. Do sit down."

Riley settled himself on the sofa, looking ill at ease.

"This must be a difficult time for you," Giles said. "Yours was a close-knit unit. You lost friends. I am sorry." He poured a cup of tea and passed it to Riley.

"The worst, I think, was seeing what had been done to Forrest and Dr. Walsh. I think the ones who had a fast, clean death were the lucky ones."

Giles supposed that was a military man's way of looking at things, but he couldn't agree. He splashed milk in his tea and said nothing.

Riley hunched forward, elbows planted on his knees. The teacup looked like a doll's cup in his hand. "The reason I came -- I had the debriefing this morning. There was a file open on the colonel's desk. A list of casualties. Somewhere along the line I developed a talent for reading upside down. I saw a name. Ethan Rayne. I guess in all the chaos -- he's dead."

Giles blinked. "But you said -- I'd thought he was in Nevada."

"That's where I thought they'd send him. Apparently they didn't. Buffy said after that whole demon thing that you had a long history with him, most of it bad. So I thought you'd want to know."

"Yes, thank you," Giles stammered. He wasn't sure what he said after that. Riley tossed back the last of his tea and left, saying he was overdue at Buffy's.

Giles closed the door behind him. Surely the report couldn't be right.

Surely Giles would have known. Would have felt his passing.

Though he'd sworn to give it up for a long while, Giles reached for the scotch and poured himself a healthy dose.

* * *

_Blood on his hands._

It positively gushed, into his hands, onto his t-shirt (not terribly clean to begin with). Giles knelt on the floor, surrounded by clotted tissues. Second sodding nosebleed in a week.

He'd felt shaky even before, but now --

The lock snicked behind him. _Bugger_, he thought. He could only hope Ethan hadn't brought a friend home with him; Ethan himself would be bad enough.

The smell of curry accompanied Ethan's entrance, an odor that usually appealed to Giles, but tonight triggered a swell of nausea.

"I brought some curry," Ethan said unnecessarily. "Christ, I'm starving. How about -- Ripper, what have you been up to?"

Of course he would sound so fucking amused.

"Nothing." His nose and throat so clogged with blood that he sounded ludicrous.

Ethan joked about his lack of tragic Camille-appeal, and Giles silently damned him to sixteen different hell dimensions. He came to Giles then, slipping an arm around his shoulders, Giles too weak to shake him off.

"Darling, darling Ripper," he crooned into Giles's ear. "What's brought this on, then?"

_Nothing._

Ethan persisted, questioning further.

_Nothing. Leave me the fuck alone._

"Give me your hand."

Giles wiped it on his shirt, though it did little good. Uttering an impatient sound, Ethan seized his blood-smeared hand and held it a moment, lost in concentration.

At last he looked up. "You're tapped out."

The blood flow seemed to double in force as Ethan released his hand, and Giles tilted his head to try to stem it.

"It's all gone, isn't it?" Ethan's tone was mildly chiding. "Your magic's gone. I do wish you wouldn't do this."

"It'll come back. It always does."

_Red on both their hands._

* * *

He remembered the touch of Ethan's hand on their very first meeting. He'd appeared in Giles's doorway one day as Giles drowsed through the afternoon heat, reveling in indolence after his regimented life at Magdalen.

Ethan had barged into his room to accuse Giles of interfering with the spell he'd been trying to cast. Just as boldly as you please, he'd spoken of trying to do magic, as casually as if he were complaining about wanting to have a smoke and discovering Giles had nicked his cigarettes. His boldness appealed to Giles, his air of amusement, his wire-thin body, the delicate hand he'd extended when Giles had said, "You were doing magic. I could help."

"Perhaps you could."

He'd felt a tingle as he took Ethan's hand. Power or sex, he wasn't quite sure.

It turned out to be both.

* * *

Reveling in the forbidden, he'd told Ethan things he was never meant to tell. Told him about the destiny he'd spurned, about the unknown girl whose life would've been inextricably woven with his. (Would they choose another slayer, if he walked away from this life? Were he and this girl truly linked, or would they place her with another watcher, as if he'd never existed?)

They lay tangled together in bed, candles burning around them, Ethan's head propped on one hand; the other hand lazily stroked Giles's bare skin.

"She slays, her Watcher watches, and then she dies," Giles told him.

"What happens to the Watcher?" His voice was slurred with drowsiness.

It was a long moment before he answered. The sound of sirens rose up through the cold night air, the loud farewells of youths as they made their drunken departures. "He stops keeping his diary," he said carefully. "He takes a quiet research post offered to him by the Watchers Council. He works with his books. He doesnt talk much. Eventually he dies too." The barrenness of this life swept through him as he described it.

Ethan tipped his head against Giles's shoulder. Giles wasn't certain whether it was an offer of comfort or merely a sign of Ethan's growing sleepiness. His hand still stroked Giles's arm.

"You see," Giles murmured, "he's not allowed to love her."

"Not allowed to love her," Ethan repeated drowsily.

"No."

His breath grew deeper, more measured. "No wonder you ran away." Ethan snugged his arms around Giles as they settled into sleep.

* * *

_Red on Ethan's hands, along the side of his face._

He shoved Giles back against the bricks, laughing at the gasp that followed.

"Christ, Ethan, we're almost in the bloody street."

Neon light spilled over them both.

"Oh, very well." Ethan sighed, hooking an arm around his waist and dragging him farther into the alley, out of the wash of red light. "It's a bit rank, but more private."

The sweet and sour reek of rubbish was strangely intoxicating, or perhaps it was merely sleep deprivation. Giles ran for days on no sleep, one of the cheapest altered states to be had. He gasped again as Ethan tugged down his zipper, at the cool of his hand on Giles's cock, the heat of his tongue in his mouth.

"Moan for me, Ripper," Ethan murmured in his ear. "I do love to hear you react."

He moaned.

There was nothing he would deny Ethan.

Nothing.

* * *

Giles poured himself another glass of single malt.

Ethan dead. Impossible to believe.

Yet it was a miracle he'd survived this long.

Sometimes it astonished Giles that _he_ had survived those months in London. Magic, drugs and alcohol when he could afford them, dangerous levels of sleep deprivation when he couldn't.

The story he'd told himself, all these years, was that Ethan had corrupted him. But he'd far outstripped Ethan in self-destructive tendencies, and half the time it was Ethan who pulled him back from one brink or another.

Giles had eventually seen enough to make him stop, go back to his dull life and his destiny, not nearly so dull as he'd anticipated.

Ethan had kept spiraling downward, and twenty years later he'd come back into Giles's life to pull him down as well. Such petty schoolboy tricks, with potential for such devastating consequences.

Peter bloody Pan, that was Ethan.

The child who defiantly stared down his parents and ate another chocolate, proclaiming, "I shall be sick _tonight_."

Still. Giles can't bring himself to believe it.

_I guess in all the chaos ... he's dead._

Chaos. Ethan was a genius at chaos. Creating it, exploiting it. The mayhem that went on in the Initiative would have been the perfect opportunity for escape.

If he were truly gone, wouldn't Giles have felt something?

Weren't they connected still?

* * *

_Blood on their hands._

Not for long. It covered their hands and then evaporated as the demon's essence disintegrated.

Leaving poor stupid Randall dying at their feet.

The demon had swallowed him whole, but for just a second -- right before Giles had plunged the knife into his chest as Ethan held him still -- he'd seen just a trace of Randall in his eyes. Then he'd gone again, and the demon was all there was.

And Ethan had shouted at him, panicked. "Ripper, do it!"

And he had.

Ethan stumbled back, staring at his own hands. _Fuck!_

Giles stared at him, holding the dripping knife. He couldn't breathe.

Within the week, he'd returned to Oxford.

* * *

_Blood on his hands._

He'd stood by and watched them take Ethan away.

Secret detention facility, Riley had said. Imprisonment without charge or trial, and he'd willingly gone along with the notion. Had even followed the military police officers outside to watch them "manhandle him into a vehicle."

He'd thought it was terribly funny, standing there in Ethan's shirt (he'd never minded wearing Ethan's shirts back then, had he?), wearing his habitual smirk as well. Giles had waved, waggling his fingers as the MPs drove him away.

No need to feel guilty, was there? Ethan caused mayhem wherever he went, often at risk of triggering much larger consequences.

(He had warned Giles about the rumblings in the dark worlds, about 314, though, hadn't he?)

Giles had let them take him, and thought no more about it, even after they'd all seen what the Initiative was willing to do to Oz.

Now Ethan was dead -- reported dead -- and Giles himself had led him to the abattoir.

Just as thoughtless to consequences as Ethan himself.

_Blood on his hands._

_Heres the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh! oh!--_

"Oh, _god_, what a fucking pompous ass you are," Giles spat.

He wiped his hands on the tea towel and reached again for the scotch.


End file.
